


Replacement Goldfish

by Callii



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning, spoilers for episode 26
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-30
Updated: 2018-07-30
Packaged: 2019-06-18 11:50:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15485121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Callii/pseuds/Callii
Summary: When Jester was little, her mom bought her a fish.





	Replacement Goldfish

**Author's Note:**

> This wasn’t edited— just a way for me to deal with Molly’s death. 
> 
> Additionally, since I haven’t seen any episodes with Caduceus Clay actually in them, he may be wildly off. Sorry.

When Jester was little and still lived with her mom and did not have any people to talk to since the Traveler was not her friend yet either, her mom bought her a fish. Well, the servants put the aquarium in her room and probably did the actual buying also, but her mom was the one who brought the fish to Jester and who hugged her and told her that the fish could be her pet until she was old enough to take care of a pony. The fish was bright blue, sort of like Jester although it was a lot darker, and its tail was frilly like a fan. She named it Sapphire of the Sea, or Saphy for short, and grinned really wide at her mom even though she knew that a proper lady was supposed to not show her feelings that much outside of bed. 

“I’m Jester,” she told Saphy after her mom left. “Well, that is not really my name. But it is a name I like a lot, and I think, since I cannot speak fish so I cannot learn your real name, we should use different names, like spies do. But do not tell my mom, please. She likes the name she gave me.”

Saphy, being a fish, said nothing, and Jester beamed. 

“We can be real spies now!” she announced. “And we can protect my mom from her rivals, and foil all their evil plots.” She could not actually think of any rivals, except maybe that man from a few weeks ago who tried to make her mom work for free, but since he had been thrown out and everyone had seen his dick and it was only four inches and everyone laughed, she did not think he would be much of a problem. 

Saphy swam around the aquarium, exploring the rocks and the treasure chest that was a disguise for a water filter and opened up to let out bubbles every so often. 

Jester gasped. “You are very good at hiding already! I am not very good yet but I am going to get better, and then we will be spies together. For now, though, I want to play princess and dragon. You have to be the princess, though, because I am always the princess and being locked in a tower is way less fun when there is no prince to set you free.”

-

Saphy, Jester found pretty quickly, was not very good at playing with her. It turned out that fishes could not leave the water, so she could not dress Saphy up like a real princess, and the fish spent a lot of time hiding in the kelp in its aquarium where she could not even see it. It also did not listen when she told it to do tricks, or looked at her pictures when she held them up to the glass even when they were pictures she drew of Saphy. She did not even get to feed it, since the maid who cleaned her room would not let her after she spilled one time and Saphy got a really big snack. Jester liked snacks a lot, especially the sweet ones that the servants brought her sometimes, but the maid took the bottle of fish food from her and told her it was very very bad for Saphy to have all that food. So Jester was not allowed to feed her fish or take it places, and it never played with her the way she wanted it to. Even spies, which Saphy was really good at since it could not talk even if it wanted to, got boring pretty quickly. 

However, she found that fishes did make good listeners. Saphy heard all of Jester’s secrets and gossip: which nobleman had come to visit her mom today, which servants were having sex, what happened when she was four and snuck out of her room while her mom had taken three whole guests into her own, how lonely it was with only servants, sometimes her mom, and a fish for company. 

“Sometimes I wish I could understand you,” Jester told it one day. “I feel a little bad that you listen to all my talking when I cannot listen to yours.”

Saphy swam between some kelp. 

Jester put a hand to her chin, mimicking a thinking position she saw her mom use sometimes. “Maybe one day, when I am older and really really pretty like my mom, I will seduce a mermaid, and she will teach me fish language, and then we can talk!” 

Saphy stopped moving. 

“She will have to be really really pretty too, though, if I will seduce her. Or maybe I will find a sea witch! And she will take my voice, maybe, but it will be worth it because then I can listen while you talk!”

Saphy floated slowly to the surface of its aquarium, still and small.

-

The maid came in with something that looked like a flyswatter and lifted Saphy out of the aquarium. 

“Is Saphy going to be okay?” Jester asked quietly, but the maid left without a word. 

-

Jester’s mom came into the room with a fish, blue and fan-tailed, and placed it gently into the aquarium. “Saphy is all better now,” she told Jester, “don’t worry.”

Jester may have been not always good at noticing details when they did not interest her, but she knew immediately that the fish in the tank was not Saphy. It was several shades lighter, closer to her own skin tone; the tail looked more like a web than a fan, and in the right light the fish looked green. Saphy never looked green. So why was this imposter in Saphy’s tank?

“I do not know who you are,” she hissed as soon as her mom left, “but you will not fool me. I know you are not Saphy. What did you do to my friend?”

The fish, being a fish, said nothing. 

Jester glared. “You tricked my mom, but I know the truth.”

She flounced over to her bed and sprawled across the cotton-candy-pink comforter. The scent of lavender was still there from when her mom had last sat down, and Jester felt a pang as she thought of her mom, tricked by the nefarious plot of this fish and whoever its true master was. 

She had to get to the bottom of this. 

-

The next time they could have dinner together was several days after the not-Saphy fish’s infiltration, and Jester vibrated with nervous energy as she sat down across from her mom in the small dining room where she ate her meals. There were no windows, just a crystal chandelier that Jester once tried to swing from (it did not end well). Jester’s chair was significantly more battered than her mom’s, due to Jester’s habit of bouncing into it as well as the fact that her mom didn’t eat with her often, and she kicked her legs into the chair’s legs as she dug into half a roasted duck. 

Finally— having foregone fork and knife in favor of her fingers and teeth, and therefore having finished her duck before her mom did— Jester spoke up. “What happened to Saphy?”

Her mom did not answer right away, and Jester wasn’t sure if it was to think of an answer or because she had just taken a bite. It was probably the second one. Probably. She hoped. 

“It is in your room, I thought,” her mom finally said. 

Jester scowled. “No,” she insisted, “that’s a different fish. Where’s Saphy?”

Her mom paused for a good while. “...I had to let it go,” she said. “Saphy will be happier in the ocean, with other fish.”

But Jester had finally put the pieces together. 

-

Jester doesn’t even realize he’s gone right away. 

She’s the first one to be saved, and so she assumes he’s gone to rescue Fjord or Yasha on his own while the rest (plus a cleric she does not recognize) focus on her. That makes sense, she figures. But the Mighty Nein minus one plus one continues, and Yasha returns, and then Fjord returns, and it is almost complete except—

“What happened to Molly?”

The not-group pauses almost as one, turning to face her across the campfire, and she bites her lip. “He should have come back by now, yes?”

Beau, who is sitting next to her, looks around, then takes a deep breath. “He… he went away. Somewhere else. Uh, back to the circus, so he could help out there. Yeah.”

Even without Beau’s stuttering and darting eyes, Jester would have understood. 

“I have heard that before,” she says, and bursts into tears. 

-

“Why do you keep lying to me?” she asked her mom through hot tears.

Her mom had come around the table to hug her, but for once the lavender scent was not comforting. “I thought you would be happier this way,” she said, stroking Jester’s hair. 

“Saphy is dead!” she wailed loudly. 

“Yes,” said her mom. “I am sorry I did not tell you.” 

“It was my friend.”

“It is hard to lose a friend,” her mom murmured. “That is why I did not tell you the truth at first. But… the new fish can be your friend too, yes?”

Jester sniffled. “It is not the same.”

Her mom kept stroking her hair. “No,” she agreed. “It is perfectly reasonable for you to feel sad that your friend is gone. But I would not want you to lose another friend because it is not your old one.”

-

Jester approaches the new person— Caduceus, she thinks— as soon as she gets him alone. She breathes in, breathes out, lifts her head. “You are not Molly.”

Caduceus shakes his head. “Indeed I’m not.”

“And you cannot replace him,” she continues. 

“I don’t intend to try.”

“And if I need to cry, I will.”

“That’s up to you,” he says. 

“Good.” She nods firmly. “I’m Jester. Let’s be friends.”


End file.
